Miranda
Hey, Becca bear, you around? I might need some 🐻 backup.
BB
With Dad and Rooster, at the PG.
Miranda
Just got the call. Asher crossed.
BB
Can you handle it? What about Terri?
Miranda
Yeah, sis. You're good. I'll get him home.
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Asher
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The window was healing. Asher watched from the floor as cracks closed and an invisible hand set shards of glass in their proper place.
“Maybe on the nightstand?” said the imposter as he moved about the room. "Think I left my phone there."
The nightstand, Asher, was beside it! He jerked his eyes from the window to the intruder. The other him scanned the floor as he moved closer. Asher needed to move — now. He pushed off his fingers and toes, sliding along the floor towards the wall left of the window.
“Nope, maybe I dropped it by the window.”
Shit. Small as he could make himself, Asher pressed his back against the wall. Focused on his breathing, he tried to hold back the panic. He felt it building in his gut and clawing up his throat. He would stay still, maybe he could hide. If he couldn’t, then he would fight. He clenched the bat close to him with both hands.
A furious pounding at the door boomed through the room, “Asher? Can you hear me?” asked the voice.
He snapped his head to the right, eyes focused on the bedroom door. “Miranda?” He really wasn’t in control. He’d fully lost his mind. All thoughts of fighting were gone. He curled to the floor with a whimper, bat in hand.
The mumbling teen sat in the front seat trying to speak, but it came out as a reddish bubble. Miranda’s neck bulged, head bleeding and turning the dark hair she’d loved into a sticky mess against the cloth seats. She raised her arm, pointing towards the trunk — the way to survive. Then Asher heard her last ragged exhale and her arm dropped.
“Asher, I have to punch through the door. If you can hear me — get back.”
No. It wasn’t her. It sounded like her, but Miranda was dead — like Dad, like Ben — it was just him and Mom now. He heard her, but it made little sense.
He was looking at Miranda — she was dead.
“Oh, there it is.”
The voice, his voice, cut through the hallucination and Asher looked up in time to see the intruder reach down towards him. “No!” he screamed. Twisting, he swiped out a leg trying to trip the intruder, then swung upwards with the bat, standing as he went. His aim was true with force enough to knock a baseball over the back fence. The bat thwacked the intruder across the head, then passed right through it.
Asher’s body trembled as the other him collapsed, turning into a large ball of floating gray mist. A miniature cloud whose center mass shifted, elongating into a humanoid form with a large maw for a face below two glowing violet points high in the forehead. Its lipless mouth filled with darkness and serrated teeth. Two legs that twisted backwards at the knee, and long slender arms flowed out with scythe like claws where hands should be. All of it happened quicker than Asher could blink. It didn’t roar or growl. It starred with those twin violet pinpricks, meeting Asher’s gaze, and took a step forward. Asher’s animalistic attack turned into a whimper — there was no doubt. Now it saw him.
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Asher felt the creature inhale. Air played over his skin like a gentle breeze blowing from behind, but flakes of color crumbled off his bat, boxers, and skin as the beast stripped them free to fly into its mouth. The creature took a step closer and more color came off Asher. Nothing seemed damaged. It didn’t hurt. His skin wasn’t torn, but he felt himself becoming less. Like the air was getting heavier, the world was going a little more out of focus. His knees shook, his hands trembled. He fumbled with one hand, trying to unlatch the window beside him. His other hand kept swinging the bat, but he may as well have been swinging at smoke above a campfire. Thin trails of the creature followed the bat’s arc. It wasn’t having any noticeable effect. He needed to change tactics, but what the eff could he do?
He needed to gain some distance. Asher stared at the claws it was holding back, its mouth thrust out as more and more color flaked from him and into it like paint chips being sucked up by a vacuum. Asher tripped as he double cross-stepped along the wall, his legs giving, and dropping him prone under the window. He rolled to his back and held the bat out in both hands to bar the monster’s way, knowing it had no chance of working.
The creature ignored the bat and lunged. Mouth still wide and sucking, but this time, its claws led the way.
Light under the door glowed purple, followed by the sound of a weapon being cocked — the door exploded in a gout of dark flame. Wood shards and chunks sprayed across the room.
Miranda charged through the already healing doorway, her long black hair tied into a single braid down her back. She wore a red sleeveless hoodie, had a fanny pack strapped across her hips and a satchel slung across her chest. Glyphs flared along the shotgun she cocked. The creature spun. Miranda growled and fired. “Get off my brother, shade!” The symbols along the barrel pulsed, and a ball of purple energy shot towards the creature.
Asher threw his hands up over his head as the cold energy missed the dodging creature, passed over him, and burst through the lower part of the window and wall, showering the front lawn in drywall, wood, and glass. Asher looked over his shoulder. He could see outside, but the damage was already repairing.
“Get up, Asher.” Miranda dodged backwards with a hop to the bed before unleashing another blast. She launched forward. Two bounding steps took her to the other side of the room, cocking the shotgun as she went. The shade lunged, taking a swipe as she sped past. She spun and dodged the claw, but lost a few flecks of color from being too close; the shade's mouth claiming its fee. “Get out of here. Use the window before it repairs.” She dodged under the next claw slash. The creature had stepped in too close. She cursed, raised the shotgun and slammed the butt of the weapon into its face — a glyph flared as it connected, knocking the shade back a step. She sprinted to the other side of the room opposite Asher.
Asher could barely get up the energy to move, but he knew how to follow orders — right now, it was probably all he could do. He pushed halfway up from the ground, turned, and with the bat leading his way. Asher slithered into the hole in the wall.
“I’ll find you after. Go, find colorful food. You’ll need it.” She fired another blast. This one slammed into the shade, causing it to flare out in a fine gray mist, but it quickly reformed and came at her again.
“Find food.” He mumbled on repeat and kept pulling himself through. It was getting tighter, but the wall wasn’t thick. Asher cried out as a shard of glass from the healing window stabbed into his side. The pain helped bring the world back into focus. He saw the ground below him. Asher dropped the bat to the lawn below, reached his hands out to the exterior walls and, like a corkscrew, tried to pop the cork. The attached shard refused to budge from the window, but he felt it shift in his side and tear deeper. It didn’t matter — he had to survive.
He was back in the car; he felt the metal scrape against him as he pulled himself from the rear seat into the trunk.
“Keep going, Bro! Go, go.” A blast slammed into the window and sill above Asher. He felt the shard in his side break free of the house, and then he was falling.
Bracing himself, he twisted his injured side away from the ground. With a grunt and a curse, Asher hit the lawn, then immediately tried to scramble to his feet. The glass shard twisted as he moved and Asher cried out, dropping back to the ground. He pushed himself up, panting through the pain, grabbed his phone from the lawn, tucked it back into the waistband of his boxers, picked up the bat, and with a stumbling jog, he headed for the street. His right-hand slick with blood as it tried to keep the shard steady.
He was in survival mode, just like that night. He remembered little after escaping the car, something about how adrenaline worked. But he remembered the feeling — the instinct to get clear, the clarity in the struggle. He felt it again now as bare feet slapped on cold concrete. He wanted to look over his shoulder, to see if his sister — Miranda was alive — or if the monster followed, but he didn’t have the energy to do anything other than soldier on. It was the first time since the accident he felt the panic couldn’t get him. There was no room for it, not if he wanted to live.
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Miranda
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She squeezed the trigger, engulfing the front door in purple fire, and didn’t slow. Sprinting out of the house at top speed towards the sidewalk. A protein bar hung from her mouth as she spun and fired at the shade only a few steps behind. She slung the shotgun over her shoulder mid stride and grabbed the bar, eating it as she ran.
Asher was nowhere in sight, but as she came to the sidewalk, she noticed the blood trail going to the right.
“I’ll find you, little brother.” She turned left. “After I lose your shade.”
Miranda picked up speed. Runners hit pavement as she pushed for the first of many crossroads she’d need if she hoped to confuse and lose the enemy.